Between clothing, music, electronic gizmos, delicious dining options and other assorted money-munchers, a person has to be leery and shrewd when approaching the consumer market. Bands and comedians come and go, and you have to decide what to spend your money on, the choices often being between something trendy or more enduring artists. It's not hard to find concert tickets to the coolest shows; the trick is paying a fair price and getting a good seat.
Music festivals of all kinds have blown up in numbers over the last few years. From hardcore headbanging festivals to softer acoustic events, you can find these anywhere around the world. When you join social networks, you can reap insider tips on the best party places, and can get in on the ground floor to buy tickets before the masses stampede and launch prices into orbit, destroying any hope you had of attending. Social networks can not only inform you of all the concert details, but you also have the chance to make friends with common interests -- and you might be able to find agents to score tickets.
Pre-sale tickets are often preceded by chitchat on club venues and artists' fan boards. Fans share info amongst themselves on these sites for weeks, months and sometimes even years ahead of a concert event, and artists may offer pre-sales to fans before the general public. That's why it's important to decide which artist fan boards you sign up with, to avoid tons of e-mail spam; basically, make sure you get a good trade-off for your e-mail address. You might even create a dummy e-mail account specifically for pre-screening and receiving contact from non-personal sources. Both social networks and websites provide a venue for fans to get together and pool their knowledge, contacts and goodwill to party like a rock star.